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12 books match the query 'Afghan War, 2001-2021'

cover of Acts of War: Iraq and Afghanistan in Seven Plays

Acts of War

Iraq and Afghanistan in Seven Plays

Karen Malpede

Northwestern University Press, 2011

As Karen Malpede points out in her introduction to Acts of War, tragedy "arose as a complement to, perhaps also as an antidote to, war." The greatest of the early playwrights wrote from experience—Aeschylus and Sophocles were generals in the Athenian army, and Euripides was a combat veteran. Electronic media reports war instantly, but the stage provides an unrivaled venue for facing the horror of armed conflict on a human scale.This timely anthology of plays by American and British writers bears witness to the realities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for combatants and civilians alike and asks what it means to be a citizen in a democracy at war. From violence on the battlefield and in the cells of Guantanamo to the toll exacted on the homefront, the seven plays collected by Malpede, Messina, and Shuman explore in depth the costs of war. Sometimes with humor or erotic charge, always with compassion and surprising insight, these contemporary plays return to the theater a necessary social edge.Karen Malpede’s introduction sets the plays in the broader contexts of theater’s roots and recent history, while award-winning journalist and author Chris Hedges provides a foreword.
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cover of Bedrooms of the Fallen

Bedrooms of the Fallen

Ashley Gilbertson

University of Chicago Press, 2014

For more than a decade, the United States has been fighting wars so far from the public eye as to risk being forgotten, the struggles and sacrifices of its volunteer soldiers almost ignored. Photographer and writer Ashley Gilbertson has been working to prevent that. His dramatic photographs of the Iraq war for the New York Times and his book Whiskey Tango Foxtrot took readers into the mayhem of Baghdad, Ramadi, Samarra, and Fallujah. But with Bedrooms of the Fallen, Gilbertson reminds us that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have also reached deep into homes far from the noise of battle, down quiet streets and country roads—the homes of family and friends who bear their grief out of view.

The book’s wide-format black-and-white images depict the bedrooms of forty fallen soldiers—the equivalent of a single platoon—from the United States, Canada, and several European nations. Left intact by families of the deceased, the bedrooms are a heartbreaking reminder of lives cut short: we see high school diplomas and pictures from prom, sports medals and souvenirs, and markers of the idealism that carried them to war, like images of the Twin Towers and Osama Bin Laden. A moving essay by Gilbertson describes his encounters with the families who preserve these private memorials to their loved ones, and shares what he has learned from them about war and loss.

Bedrooms of the Fallen is a masterpiece of documentary photography, and an unforgettable reckoning with the human cost of war.
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cover of Frustrated Empire: US Foreign Policy, 9/11 to Iraq

Frustrated Empire

US Foreign Policy, 9/11 to Iraq

David Ryan

Pluto Press, 2007

David Ryan examines the broad contexts of US foreign policy and the lingering aftermath of the Vietnam War that shaped the opportunistic framing of 9/11 and paved the way for the long-held neo-conservative desire for regime change and war in Iraq.
He explores the construction of the cultural framework for war following 9/11, the legitimacy of military force in Afghanistan, the rise of anti-Americanism, within the broader contexts of the struggle over legitimacy, identity and leadership.
Turning the "clash of civilizations" thesis on its head, Ryan presents a careful analysis of the evolution of US foreign policy and its engagement with Iraq through the 1980s. While 9/11 provided the opportunity, the post-Vietnam context provides a more pertinent framework for this reflection on the Gulf War, the Iraq War and the strategic implications for US foreign policy.
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cover of Gender Is a Weapon: Liberalism, Difference, and US Counterinsurgency

Gender Is a Weapon

Liberalism, Difference, and US Counterinsurgency

Elizabeth Mesok

University of Michigan Press, 2026

Following the end of the draft in 1973, the US military increasingly offered women the opportunity to transform their lives—to obtain an education, receive healthcare, provide for their families, and prove their worth to the nation. By the time the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan at the turn of the twenty-first century, the labor of women—and Black women in particular—was critical to the military’s ability to simultaneously wage two wars. Within the context of counterinsurgencies fought amid civilian populations, the US military discovered the value of women’s gender difference as a weapon of war.

Through ethnographic and archival research with women soldiers and Marines, as well as military and government officials, Gender Is a Weapon contextualizes women’s service in Iraq and Afghanistan against the promises of liberal inclusion unfolding throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Centered on narratives of Black and Indigenous women, women of color, immigrant women, and queer women, the book analyzes the transformations of martial citizenship; the racialized language of cultural difference in the US’s revitalized counterinsurgency doctrine; the gendered performances of women in combat and civilian engagement missions; and ultimately, the irreparable injuries of body and mind with which these women returned home. The epilogue discusses the recent dismantling of DEI in the military and US government more broadly, reflecting on what we can learn from the violent history of military liberal inclusion to help us better understand our contemporary moment. By carefully attending to both the discursive construction and performative enactment of gender in militarized and securitized contexts, the book advances theoretical frames for studying gender in state militaries, militarism, and late liberalism.
 

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cover of Generation Vet: Composition, Student Veterans, and the Post-9/11 University

Generation Vet

Composition, Student Veterans, and the Post-9/11 University

Sue Doe

Utah State University Press, 2014

Institutions of higher education are experiencing the largest influx of enrolled veterans since World War II, and these student veterans are transforming post-secondary classroom dynamics. While many campus divisions like admissions and student services are actively moving to accommodate the rise in this demographic, little research about this population and their educational needs is available, and academic departments have been slower to adjust. In Generation Vet, fifteen chapters offer well-researched, pedagogically savvy recommendations for curricular and programmatic responses to student veterans for English and writing studies departments.

In work with veterans in writing-intensive courses and community contexts, questions of citizenship, disability, activism, community-campus relationships, and retention come to the fore. Moreover, writing-intensive courses can be sites of significant cultural exchanges—even clashes—as veterans bring military values, rhetorical traditions, and communication styles that may challenge the values, beliefs, and assumptions of traditional college students and faculty.

This classroom-oriented text addresses a wide range of issues concerning veterans, pedagogy, rhetoric, and writing program administration. Written by diverse scholar-teachers and written in diverse genres, the essays in this collection promise to enhance our understanding of student veterans, composition pedagogy and administration, and the post-9/11 university.

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cover of Intervention Narratives: Afghanistan, the United States, and the Global War on Terror

Intervention Narratives

Afghanistan, the United States, and the Global War on Terror

Purnima Bose

Rutgers University Press, 2020

Intervention Narratives examines the contradictory cultural representations of the US intervention in Afghanistan that help to justify an imperial foreign policy. These narratives involve projecting Afghans as brave anti-communist warriors who suffered the consequences of American disengagement with the region following the end of the Cold War, as victimized women who can be empowered through enterprise, as innocent dogs who need to be saved by US soldiers, and as terrorists who deserve punishment for 9/11. Given that much of public political life now involves affect rather than knowledge, feelings rather than facts, familiar recurring tropes of heroism, terrorism, entrepreneurship, and canine love make the war easier to comprehend and elicit sympathy for US military forces. An indictment of US policy, Bose demonstrates that contemporary imperialism operates on an ideologically diverse cultural terrain to enlist support for the war across the political spectrum.
 
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cover of Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families, Updated Edition

Operation Homecoming

Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families, Updated Edition

edited by Andrew Carroll

University of Chicago Press, 2008

Operation Homecoming is the result of a major initiative launched by the National Endowment for the Arts to bring distinguished writers to military bases to inspire U.S. soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and their families to record their wartime experiences. Encouraged by such authors as Tom Clancy, Tobias Wolff, and Marilyn Nelson, American military personnel and their loved ones wrote candidly about what they saw, heard, and felt while in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as on the home front. These unflinching eyewitness accounts, private journals, short stories, and letters offer an intensely revealing look into extraordinary lives and are an unforgettable contribution to wartime literature.
 
“One of the chanted mantras of our time is, ‘But I support the troops.’ Terrific. Now read Operation Homecoming to find out who they are, what they think, feel, want, have learned, won and lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.”—Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal
 
“This anthology is the honest voice of war. . . . In the end, they are all one voice, a voice we must hear, and must not forget.”—Jeff Shaara
 
“These voices are stirring, chilling, and unforgettable.”—Bobbie Ann Mason
 
“[Captures] what journalists cannot, no matter how close they get—firsthand accounts from the warriors and the families they leave behind.”—Chicago Tribune
 
 
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cover of Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War: The Movement to Stop the War on Terror

Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War

The Movement to Stop the War on Terror

Jeremy Varon

University of Chicago Press, 2025

An original history of the popular movement against the War on Terror—the greatest case of “we told you so” in modern political history.
 
Just after 9/11, President George W. Bush climbed the rubble where the World Trade Center had stood. Surrounded by shouts of anger, he said, “The people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!” With these words, Bush ushered in the War on Terror. Quickly, a global protest movement mobilized against it, reshaping the political, moral, and media landscape.

Jeremy Varon’s Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War is the definitive history of that movement. Millions of Americans participated in thousands of acts of protest, from demonstrations to civil disobedience to peace encampments in Iraq. On February 15, 2003, up to 30 million people worldwide took to the streets in the largest protest in human history. But this enormous outcry was not enough to stop the US invasion of Iraq. Varon explores the limits to the movement’s power but also shows how it worked to make opposition to the Iraq War a part of public debate, hastening its end and limiting the broader War on Terror. In the book, you’ll meet the families of the 9/11 victims, Iraq War veterans, and Gold Star families who spoke out against war.

Written with a lively and revelatory voice, Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War illuminates the passion of the peace movement, the mark it made, and the enduring legacies of the War on Terror.
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cover of Our Latest Longest War: Losing Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan

Our Latest Longest War

Losing Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan

Edited by Aaron B. O'Connell

University of Chicago Press, 2017

The first rule of warfare is to know one’s enemy. The second is to know thyself. More than fifteen years and three quarters of a trillion dollars after the US invasion of Afghanistan, it’s clear that the United States followed neither rule well.

America’s goals in Afghanistan were lofty to begin with: dismantle al Qaeda, remove the Taliban from power, remake the country into a democracy. But not only did the mission come completely unmoored from reality, the United States wasted billions of dollars, and thousands of lives were lost. Our Latest Longest War is a chronicle of how, why, and in what ways the war in Afghanistan failed. Edited by historian and Marine lieutenant colonel Aaron B. O’Connell, the essays collected here represent nine different perspectives on the war—all from veterans of the conflict, both American and Afghan. Together, they paint a picture of a war in which problems of culture and an unbridgeable rural-urban divide derailed nearly every field of endeavor. The authors also draw troubling parallels to the Vietnam War, arguing that deep-running ideological currents in American life explain why the US government has repeatedly used armed nation-building to try to transform failing states into modern, liberal democracies. In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, this created a dramatic mismatch of means and ends that neither money, technology, nor the force of arms could overcome.

The war in Afghanistan has been the longest in US history, and in many ways, the most confounding.  Few who fought in it think it has been worthwhile.  These are difficult topics for any American or Afghan to consider, especially those who lost friends or family in it. This sobering history—written by the very people who have been fighting the war—is impossible to ignore.
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cover of Severance Songs

Severance Songs

Joshua Corey

Tupelo Press, 2011

In his third full-length book of poems, Joshua Corey puts the sonnet to the test with this sequence of fractured, ventilated, and unrhymed poems written in the aftermath of 9/11 while Corey was living at a pastoral remove from war and terror in upstate New York. The tension between idyllic personal circumstances and horrific world-historical events led Corey to produce this series of layered poems, variously sardonic and sincere in tone.

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cover of The Language of Birds

The Language of Birds

Norbert Scheuer

Haus Publishing, 2018

It is 2003, and Paul Arimond is serving as a paramedic in Afghanistan. The twenty-four-year-old has no illusions of becoming a hero. Rather, he has chosen the army to escape the tragedies of his past and his own feelings of guilt. As a result, he finds himself in the same land, now war-torn, where an ancestor of his, Ambrosius Arimond, a late eighteenth-century traveler and ornithologist, once explored and developed the theory of a universal language of birds.

As visceral horrors and everyday banalities of the war threaten to engulf Paul, he, like his great-great-grandfather, finds his very own refuge in Afghanistan’s natural world. In a diary filled with exquisite drawings of birds and ruminations on the life he left behind, Paul describes his experiences living with two comrades who are fighting their own demons and his befriending of an Afghan man, Nassim, as well as his dreams of escaping the restrictive base camp and visiting the shores of a lake visible from the lookout tower. But when he finally reaches the lake one night, he finds himself in the midst of a chain of events that, with his increasingly fragile state of mind, has dramatic—and ultimately heartbreaking—consequences.

A meditative novel that shows a new side to the conflict in Afghanistan, The Language of Birds takes a moving look at the all-too-human costs of war and questions what it truly means to fight for freedom.
 
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cover of The War Makes Everyone Lonely

The War Makes Everyone Lonely

Graham Barnhart

University of Chicago Press, 2019

In his first collection of poems, many of which were written during his years as a US Army Special Forces medic, Graham Barnhart explores themes of memory, trauma, and isolation. Ranging from conventional lyrics and narrative verse to prose poems and expressionist forms, the poems here display a strange, quiet power as Barnhart engages in the pursuit and recognition of wonder, even while concerned with whether it is right to do so in the fraught space of the war zone. We follow the speaker as he treads the line between duty and the horrors of war, honor and compassion for the victims of violence, and the struggle to return to the daily life of family and society after years of trauma.
            Evoking the landscapes and surroundings of war, as well as its effects on both US military service members and civilians in war-stricken countries, The War Makes Everyone Lonely is a challenging, nuanced look at the ways American violence is exported, enacted, and obscured by a writer poised to take his place in the long tradition of warrior-poets.
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